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| Female soldiers train at the Cultural Support Assessment and Selection program at Fort Bragg. |
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US Army photo by Cpl. Clifton D. Sams
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On the same day that the Department of Defense announced the end of the ban on women in combat, a study revealed an increase in the number of unintended pregnancies among military women. February's Obstetrics & Gynecology noted that 10.5 percent of military women reported an unplanned pregnancy in the past year, a rate higher than the general population. The report mirrored a similar finding published in the September 2011 issue of Contraception Journal.
The findings of the surveys are particularly disturbing since unwanted
pregnancies are a special problem for members of the armed forces serving
overseas. Since 1996, Federal law has banned abortion-related services on US
military bases and facilities. According to the National Abortion
Federation, the Federal law banning military abortion services "is a
blatant disregard for the reproductive rights of female soldiers and also
constitutes a direct threat to their health and welfare." One of the chief
defenders of the law has been President
Obama's nominee to be the next Secretary of Defense, Senator Chuck Hegel. As Secretary of Defense, Hagel will be responsible for providing health
care to over 200,000 female soldiers, military wives and their daughters.
The normally vocal reproductive rights lobby has, for the most part, either remained silent, or endorsed Hegel's nomination outright. Every Democratic Senator has endorsed Hagel's nomination, including staunch reproductive rights advocates like Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and his nomination appears certain. Senator Shaheen went so far as to praise ChuckHagel for serving "as a voice of pragmatism and principle" in the Senate.
It is difficult to reconcile the Chuck
Hagel described by Senator Shaheen with the Chuck Hagel who argued, during his first senate campaign in 1995, that he did not believe that rape or incest were necessary exceptions to laws prohibiting abortion. An article on Hagel's abortion record by Adam Serwer in last December's Mother Jones cited Hagel's matter-of-fact statement that "if I want to prevent abortions, I don't think those two exceptions are relevant." It is also difficult to reconcile Senator Shaheen's pragmatization of Hagel with a twelve year Senate voting record that was an anti-choice crusade against access to safe reproductive health care for American women. Senator Hagel's more notorious anti-choice votes include:
- his 2000 vote to block the repeal of the Federal ban on abortions on military bases and DOD facilities.
- his 2005 vote against spending $100 million to reduce teen pregnancy by education and contraception.
- his 2006 vote to require health care facilities to notify the parents of minors who receive out of state abortions.
- his 2007 vote in favor of barring organizations that perform abortions from receiving HHS grants.
- his 2008vote to make it a Federal crime to transport minors across state lines for an abortion.
